


Sedated

by BananasofThorns



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Song: Sedated (Hozier), Songfic, Supernatural Elements, Symbolism, Tim Drake is Not Okay, anyway he and conner don't show up till the final chapter (spoiler alert?), conner kent is a Good Friend, i mean probably, it wasn't showing the clark kent tag until i added the dcu fandom?? wack, lowkey made myself sad with this lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananasofThorns/pseuds/BananasofThorns
Summary: “Is everything alright? What’s—”Tim closes his eyes. The corners of his lips barely rise in the ghost of a smile. “Everything’s fine, Jay. Go to sleep.”
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 47
Kudos: 375





	1. something isn't right, babe

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been bouncing around my head for a while but I finally figured out how I wanted to write it

_Any way  
To distract and sedate  
Adding shadows  
To the walls of the cave_

* * *

“Tim?” Dick asks, tilting his head. “Is everything okay?”

Tim forces a smile onto his face, but it feels flimsy, like he’s acting through a film. “Of course.” He moves forward, towards the doorway, and places a hand on Dick’s shoulder as he passes. “Everything’s fine.”

Dick’s eyes are fluttering closed before the words are finished, even as he tries to fight it. Tim keeps his eyes closed as he lowers his brother onto the couch. It doesn’t help; the weight of the betrayal on Dick's face feels like sludge in Tim’s veins.

\---

“Drake,” Damian snaps, “are you even listening to me?”

Tim blinks. The question is slowly processing, but it’s like every other syllable is distorting itself into static. Damian scoffs and shoves Tim out of the way. His hands are cold on Tim’s arm.

“Useless. I shall find Grayson myself, then.” The words trail off into a yawn that Damian fails to muffle. His eyes narrow. “Drake—”

Tim catches him when he stumbles, lifting him with ease. He leaves Damian on his bed; the boy looks like he’s drowning in the comforter.

\---

Bruce doesn’t look up from his paperwork when Tim taps his knuckles against the doorway of the office. “Yes?”

“Can we talk?”

Bruce sets his pen down, a frown on his face. “Is something wrong?”

Tim makes his way to the desk, papers held loosely by his side, centimeters from slipping from his hands altogether. “I have the evidence for the Cabano case,” he says. His fingers brush Bruce’s when he hands the file over.

“Already?” Bruce asks, blinking slow and sluggish.

“Yeah,” Tim murmurs through numb lips, shifting papers and pens so Bruce’s head doesn’t land on anything too hard. “Already.”

\---

Cass is waiting for him when he steps out of the office. She hands him his backpack and falls into step beside him. They stop outside the living room.

“Safe?” She asks. Tim smiles, exhaustion tugging the corners of his lips down.

“Always.”

Cass smiles back, taking his hand and leading him towards the couch. She curls up beside Dick, eyes sliding closed.

“Miss you.”

\---

“Master Timothy.”

Tim spins, the heel of his boot slowing his turn only slightly. The thermos of coffee is heavy in his hand. “Alfred.”

The butler steps forward, hands behind his back, posture as perfect as ever. “I take it you are the reason the Manor has been so quiet?”

Tim’s shoulders slump. “I—”

“I quite understand, Master Timothy, but I do wish you didn’t see this as necessary. Master Bruce—”

“Tell them goodbye for me?” Tim tucks the thermos into a pocket of his backpack and steps around Alfred, careful to leave as much space as he can between them.

He doesn’t look back, but he desperately wants to.

\---

Tim doesn’t expect Jason to be arriving at the Cave just as he finishes disabling the trackers on his bike. He stands, sliding his backpack off his shoulder and onto the floor. Jason tugs his helmet off.

“Tim? You going somewhere?”

The corners of Tim’s lips barely rise in the ghost of a smile. He rests a hand on Jason’s shoulder, leading him to the chair in front of the Batcomputer.

Jason glances at the security footage of the Manor. “Is everything alright? What’s—”

“Everything’s fine, Jay. Go to sleep.”

* * *

There are no metas allowed in Gotham.


	2. i'm somewhere outside my life, babe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally was going to leave this fic as a one-shot, but then I got inspiration for a continuation so here we are!! This chapter is over double the length of the first one
> 
> Thank y'all so much for all your wonderful comments. ily 💛💛

_Sedated, we’re nursing on a_ _  
_ _Poison that never stung_ _  
_ _Our teeth and lungs are lined_ _  
_ _With the scum of it_

* * *

Dick wakes up with a pounding headache and a vague, unplaceable sense of betrayal. He groans, stretching as best he can on a couch he doesn’t remember falling asleep on. One of his arms is numb, pins and needles frozen beneath his skin. His feet hit someone’s thigh and he pauses, sitting up slowly so his headache doesn’t worsen.

Is he hungover? He doesn’t remember drinking anything. He’s not in the Cave, so he wasn’t drugged.

Rubbing his temples, one hand up to block the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, Dick looks down towards the end of the couch.

Cass is curled up asleep, which is strange in and of itself. She should’ve woken up when Dick nudged her. Dick frowns, searching his memory—

Tim.

Swinging his legs onto the floor with a new sense of urgency, Dick stands, ignoring his headache. He needs to find Tim. He needs to make sure everyone is alright.

God, _Tim._

Dick throws one last glance at Cass and makes his way towards the rest of the Manor, only to pause in the doorway when he realizes he has no idea where to start. Tim’s...powers (when did he get _those?)_ are sleep-related, probably, right? Dick woke up on the couch, but he’s pretty sure that’s just because it was closest to where Tim—

Knocked him out.

 _Jesus_.

Dick shakes his head, wincing when it makes the pain in his temples flare up. Bedrooms - he should check there. It’s not like he has any better ideas, not when Tim can and almost certainly has disappeared without a trace. Not when Tim can make the Manor so eerily, horribly _silent_.

Dick swallows around the bitterness in his mouth. He doesn’t want to think about that.

\---

Damian startles awake with a growl on his tongue, drowning in unfamiliar sheets. A quick scan of the room reveals he is in Drake’s bed; even if he has no memory of how he got there, the scattered coffee mugs and empty walls give it away easily. Despite the golden light streaming through the windows, the room feels cold and barren.

Drake himself is nowhere to be seen. There is a bitter taste on Damian’s tongue, but he cannot place where it is from. Memories of an argument are muffled by the faint ache in his temples. Drake would not tell him where Grayson is—

Damian trips out of the bed with a snarl. He flings open the door, anger and betrayal thrumming through his veins. His hand is tingling.

Grayson stumbles back, surprise and relief painting themselves across his features.

“Dami—?”

“Where is Drake,” Damian snaps. Grayson places a hand on his shoulder when he attempts to push into the hallway. He is frowning, eyes scanning Drake’s bedroom. “What are you—”

“Damian.”

Grayson steps carefully across Drake’s floor, feet silent against the carpet. Damian notices but does not comment on the wince he makes at the sunlight. Grayson stops in front of Drake’s desk and picks something up.

It is Drake’s phone.

\---

They find Father in his study, a file of papers beneath his head. He does not wake up when Damian clears his throat, nor when Grayson shakes his shoulder. Grayson begins to pace, though his hands are steady when he runs them through his hair. Damian perches in the chair across from Father, counting breaths to reign in his— irritation. He is not worried.

Father wakes up when Damian reaches his eightieth breath. It is not anything dramatic; one second he is asleep, and the next he is not. He sits up slowly, carefully devoid of reaction, and Grayson rushes over.

“Bruce?’

Father blinks. “Dick. What happened?”

He is rubbing the fingers of his right hand absentmindedly, like he does not realize he is doing it. Damian stands, eyes narrowing.

“Drake has—”

“I can’t find Tim,” Grayson blurts. “He’s been off since that mission a week ago, y’know? And earlier I was talking to him and he seemed sad, almost? So I asked him what was wrong and—” Grayson takes a breath. “And next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch with a pounding headache. Cass was asleep next to me and she didn’t wake up, which is weird because it’s Cass and I touched her and she didn’t react and—”

“Grayson,” Damian snaps. Something uncomfortable is settling itself in his chest. “Calm down. You are not thinking rationally.”

Grayson takes another breath, deeper this time, and runs a hand over his face. He turns to Father. “He left his phone and all his computers on his desk. I didn’t look through the computers, but there was no lock on his phone. Everything was organized into folders and I think he deleted some things, but I’m not sure what right now.”

Father frowns. “We were separated on the mission to Narciso Labs. Red Robin was the one that found and incapacitated Dr. Nguyen. He seemed dazed and lethargic when we made it back to the Cave, but he tested negative for any drugs. He didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary in his report.”

Father’s eyes narrow slightly, growing distant in the way they do when he is attempting to figure something out. Grayson tilts his head, lips twitching down.

“Do you think—?’

Father nods, something grim in his eyes and the set of his mouth. “Let’s find Cass and Alfred first. We should all go down to the Cave together, just in case.”

Damian bites back his annoyance. Surely they are not implying that Drake has suddenly gained powers? He tells himself he cannot understand their concern.

He leaps off the chair and stalks towards the door. Drake would not betray them, would he?

\---

Jason jolts awake with one hand already reaching for a gun, his brain screaming _danger, danger, danger_ because he can’t remember where he is. He’s standing before his eyes are even open. The clatter of whatever he was sitting on tumbling to the ground only barely registers through the film coating his brain. 

“-ason. Jason!” Jason blinks, realizes that his eyes have opened at some point, though he hasn’t registered anything about his surroundings. “Put the gun down,” someone says. 

Jason frowns because they sound vaguely familiar, but he doesn’t lower his guard. Everything is sluggish, nothing in his brain processing as fast as it should. 

“Jason!” The person repeats. A warm hand wraps around his wrist, light enough that he doesn’t register it as a threat. “Drop the gun.”

He blinks, vague images sharpening into people. His gun is pointing just past Dick’s shoulder. The safety is still on, but he can see Alfred standing in front of Damian a few feet away. Cass is beside Dick, posture relaxed and eyes sharp. Bruce is on Jason’s other side.

“Shit.” Jason stuffs the gun back in its holster, blinking when his fingers start to tingle as they relax. “What happened?” 

Everyone is in the Cave but none of them are in their uniforms except Jason himself, his helmet laying discarded somewhere by the bikes. Wait. His eyes narrow and he does another headcount. Dick, Damian, Bruce, Cass, Alfred—

Jason flexes numb fingers, hazy memories trickling to the front of his mind. “Where’s Tim?”

\---

Cass stands vigil as Bruce scours through the security camera footage, her still-numb hand a grounding weight on his shoulder.

She is waiting.

Behind her, she can hear Jason pacing and ranting as Dick attempts to calm him down. Damian is sulking, the glower on his face barely masking his worry. Alfred is beside him, a comforting hand on Damian’s shoulder.

“I should have _noticed,”_ Jason snaps, throwing his hands out.

“You didn’t know,” Dick reassures, just as he’s done every previous time Jason has berated himself for this. “None of us did.” Cass’s lips purse almost imperceptibly, eyes still fixed on the computer screens. Bruce switches to the footage of his office and the hallway outside. “It’s not your fault.”

\---

“You didn’t try to stop him,” Bruce says. The Cave falls silent.

Cass inclines her head. “No.”

“Why?” Damian demands, suddenly on Bruce’s other side, arms crossed. “Surely _you_ knew something was wrong.”

“Yes.” Cass’s fingers twitch on Bruce’s shoulder. “Could not have helped him.”

“‘Helped _him_?’” Jason repeats. “What about us?”

“Not injured,” Cass points out. “Only numb. And worried.” She lifts her hand, wiggles her fingers. “Touch-based.”

Dick shoots Jason a look. “Damian, Bruce, and I were already out, and she probably knew Tim wouldn’t hurt Alfred. None of us knew you were coming, Jay. And, as she said,” he adds, “his powers are touch-based. She couldn’t have stopped him if she wanted to.”


	3. just a little hush, babe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's done!! It took longer than I wanted bc I couldn't figure out how to write this chapter, and I'm still not _entirely_ happy with it but!! I still like it

_Darlin', don't you_ _  
_ _Stand there watching, won't you_ _  
_ _Come and save me from it?_

* * *

It takes a day and a half for Alfred to ban Jason from patrol. 

After that, it only takes a few hours before he’s banned from the punching bags, too. Bruce is the one that pulls him away, wrapping Jason up in a hug that pins his arms to his sides. Cass watches, silent, as the computer pings negative on yet another failed search algorithm.

\---

“I can’t feel my arm,” Jason admits, staring at the floor as Alfred bandages his knuckles. “I didn’t—” He cuts himself off with a growl. “That’s why I just kept punching. I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t _realize_.”

\---

It’s Dick who realizes what they’ve been doing wrong for the past three days. Bruce turns, alarmed, when he skids to a breathless stop beside the Batcomputer.

“Call Clark.”

\---

 _“Bruce, long time no see,”_ Clark answers. _“I’m assuming this isn’t a social call?”_

“Have you seen or heard from Tim recently?” Bruce asks, straight to the point.

The line goes very, very quiet. Jason starts to storm forward, mouth already open in a snarl, but Dick stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Jason shrugs out of the hold but stays where he is.

Finally, Clark says, _“Can I call you back?”_

\---

Tim is hiding out in Smallville.

Conner is there with him, and they had both forced Clark not to call Bruce as soon as he found out. Clark isn’t saying much, but Jason gets the feeling that Tim’s new powers work on Kryptonians, too.

\---

 _“He says he will return to Gotham, but only if Conner gets to come with him,”_ Clark reports an hour later.

Bruce sighs. “Of course. We’ll send—”

 _“Only two of you,”_ Clark cuts him off. _“Cass and Jason. That’s what he said. Take the Batplane. I’ll send you his coordinates. He and Conner are going to find an open field for them to land in.”_

Bruce clearly isn’t happy with the situation, but he must want Tim back more than anything else, because he doesn’t argue.

Jason is silent and pacing the entire flight to Kansas. He’s not sure why Tim asked for _him_ , of all people.

He’s not sure he deserves it.

\---

Conner steps into the plane first. Tim trails behind him, tense and silent. His hands are ungloved.

Cass wonders if this is a threat or if his powers work through clothes.

She thinks it might be the latter. After all, Jason had been in his Red Hood uniform at the time. He was the most affected out of them all.

\---

“I’m sorry,” Tim says, breaking the silence that had engulfed the plane. Cass smiles at him; she had forgiven him before she had even been asleep.

Jason tenses, hands curling into fists, which puts Conner on edge as well. After a moment, Jason sighs. “Not your fault.” His voice is rough.

They all fall silent once again. It stays that way for the remainder of the ride to Gotham.

\---

Dick bounds over as they exit the plane. He barely stops himself from throwing his arms around Tim, who slumps ever so slightly. He looks tired. Behind him, Conner is glaring.

“Tim,” Bruce greets, stopping a few feet away. “Welcome home.”

All the tension seems to drain from Tim’s body. “I can’t control it. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. None of you did, but—” He shakes his head. “I had to go.”

“Well, you’re back now. We missed you, son,” Bruce says. Tim smiles, a weak curl of his lips.

“Missed you too.”

\---

It takes another week for the numbness in Jason’s arm to completely fade. No one is sure why it lingered so long, and Tim feels especially bad, but Jason can’t find it in him to be too angry.

Tim takes three weeks to gain control of his powers. He doesn’t tell anyone except Conner, but Cass finds out anyway. Everyone else is clued in when she hugs him out of nowhere and, despite his obvious surprise, she isn’t knocked out.

This spurs a large group hug. Even Damian reluctantly joins. 

Conner, despite Tim’s pleading, does nothing to extract his friend.

Tim doesn’t really mind all that much.

\---

“You okay?” Conner asks, hovering a few feet above the rooftop. Tim smiles.

“Yeah.”

* * *

There is one meta allowed in Gotham.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> technically there are more metas than Tim allowed in Gotham but. we're gonna ignore that for dramatic purposes and parallels


End file.
